It’s a lot of fun to come home from a photo session (or a vacation or any occasion where you take pictures) with a lot of photos. But if the majority of the pictures aren’t any good, it can be a real mood-killer.
Over the last year I’ve reduced my ‘bad’ photos dramatically, basically by thinking more before pressing the button (the no-good shots still exist, but they’re a lot less nowadays). Here are the five factors that I think has increased my good photos percentage the most when it comes to portrait photography. Not necessarily in that order though.
1. Light
Light is without a doubt my number one factor for good pictures. You got a nice coloured wall for a portrait shot, but the light is no good? Move. A beautiful view, but the light is much better ten steps to the left? Move. Make light the number one thing you think about, and then choose the location. Not the other way around. I promise you’ll get much better pictures. This is especially important if you – like me – like to work with natural light mostly.
2. Sharpness
Sure – an unsharp picture can be great. But in 99 out of a 100 cases I prefer sharp and crisp portrait pictures. That’s why I keep my shutter speed high, use low f-stops and why I’m not afraid to push the ISO up high. Maybe that’s not for everyone (or at least not for every situation), but I strive for this in most cases.
3. Background
Keep. The. Background. Clean. Almost every portrait is better with an uncluttered background. Don’t only consider the subject you’re shooting, but be sure to check out what’s behind him/her. Look out for signs, other people, cars etc. Sure, you can use the healing brush or the clone stamp in Photoshop afterwards, but a little observation when photographing will save you hours of Photoshopping, trying to remove that huge red STOP-sign.
4. Depth of field
This has been said many times before, but it’s definitely worth saying again. Using large apertures (low f-numbers) makes a huge difference for portraits. It can also be related to the previous factor (clean backgrounds) since you’ll get the subject in focus and the background out of focus, meaning that you can get a good portrait even with a bad or cluttered background. Since I mainly use prime lenses, I’m almost always shooting at f/1,4 or f/1,8.
5. Delete in-camera
This isn’t really a photography tip, but still a thing that I do on location. It’s much more fun to return with 100 photos that are good or at least decent, than coming home with 300, of which two out of three are useless. Deleting the bad shots in camera also increases ones self-esteem, since you’ve already forgotten about the bad shots when you look through your photos at home.
That’s it. My top five factors for reducing the bad pictures. And once you’ve nailed the shot, here are a few suggestions on how to continue in Photoshop.
(Bear in mind that these are my very personal opinions. Others may think very differently.)
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